When knuckleheads fly off the handle there might be a problem. IWSG, Quotes, Being Thankful

 Origins: a recurring post in which I delve into the history of a word or phrase.

Today's phrase is: Fly off the Handle

This idiom has been around from as early as1816 and is American in origin. You probably know it means to become angry especially without warning and, I might add, over nothing. It comes from the very particular and dangerous example of an axe head coming loose and flying off its handle.

In 1828 there was this bit of news from Philadelphia in The United States Gazette.

On Saturday morning...two sons of Mr. Jonas Hackman were engaged at chopping wood on Mr. Frankenfield's...when the axed of one of them flew off the handle and struck his brother, aged 17 years, with the sharp edge on the breast, the bone of which was entirely severed by the blow. A surgeon was immediately sent for and notwithstanding the wound had opened so that it stood at least four inches apart when he arrived, he succeeded in closing it within a quarter of an inch. The boy is doing well and hopes are entertained of a speedy recovery.

Since axes have been around for a least 44,000 years I suspect axe heads have occasionally flown off their handles for just as long. You can find more examples of flying off the handle HERE.

Today's Weird Word is: Knucklehead

This American word describing a stupid person, has been around since the 1890s. Apparently it became more popular in 1942 when the US Air Force used a cartoon character named R. F. Knucklehead to help train recruits. 

There doesn't appear to be any particular story of how the knuckle and head got put together to describe someone who is not particularly bright.

Of course, there is also the Harley-Davidson knucklehead engine...

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Posting the First Wednesday of every month, the Insecure Writer's Support Group, is the brainchild of Alex Cavanaugh. YOU can sign up HERE to participate.

Every month a question will be posed that may prompt you to share advice, insight, a personal experience or story. Remember, the question is optional. You can write about anything that relates to your writing journey.

Let's give a warm welcome to our co-hosts: Rebecca Douglass, Natalie Aguirre, Cathrina Constantine, and Louise Barbour!

This month's question is: Is there a genre you haven't tried writing in yet that you really want to try? If so, do you plan on trying it? Short answer. No. However, in the long ago I did try my hand at fantasy. I got so caught up in world building that only one story of the many I started made it to the finish line. I haul it out from time to time to see if it's worthy of being worked on. I still find it hilarious, a kind of DiscWorld meets Oz mashup.

Quotes of the Mont

“Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you’ve got to start young.” 

Fred Astaire

“Please don’t retouch my wrinkles. It took me so long to earn them.” 

Anna Magnani, actress

“Just remember, once you’re over the hill you begin to pick up speed.” 

Charles Schulz

“With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.” 

William Shakespeare

Being Thankful

At the end of June I hit a milestone birthday.

I am thankful to have made it to my

Diamond Jubilee!

My two BFFs threw me a little party. Just the three of us.

Got this lovely hat (along with a couple of other nice things) 

and a fun butterfly crown.

We spent the weekend putting jigsaw puzzles together, 

nibbling on food and drinking beer flights.

All in moderation, of course.

Here's hoping we have a Fourth of July to celebrate in the years to come.

"May the foundation of our new constitution, be justice, Truth and Righteousness. Like the wise Mans house may it be founded upon those Rocks and then neither storms or tempests will overthrow it."  Abigail Adams

Have you ever flown of the handle? Ever been called a knucklehead? Is there a genre you haven't written in that you might like to try?  

Let's Talk Turkey, IWSG, Being Thankful

Posting the First Wednesday of every month, the Insecure Writer's Support Group, is the brainchild of Alex Cavanaugh. YOU can sign up HERE to participate.

Every month a question will be posed that may prompt you to share advice, insight, a personal experience or story. Remember, the question is optional. You can write about anything that relates to your writing journey.

Let's give a warm welcome to our co-hosts:  PJ Colando, Jean Davis, Lisa Buie Collard, and Diedre Knight!

This month's question is: November is National Novel Writing Month. Have you ever participated? If not, why not? I have participated, back when it was still new. I did it twice and finished both times. The novels I wrote languish in their files because 1) they need a lot of work and 2) I'm lazy. One is a crazy fantasy with lots of humor that's kind of a combo of Oz and Disc World. The other is a retelling of Sleeping Beauty, West Indian style. Both have potential, but both need soooOOOOoooo much work... 

Origins: a recurring post in which I delve into the history of a word or phrase.

Today's word is: Turkey

Last month is was about pie, so it's seems only right that this month it be about turkey.

Back in the 1540s the Portuguese imported the guinea fowl from Madagascar and it arrived in Europe via... you guessed it... Turkey. But wait, guinea fowls were not called turnkeys.

The North American bird we call the turkey was first domesticated by the Aztecs and introduced to Spain by the Conquistadores. Because North Africa was under Ottoman (Turkish) rule and because it looked similar to the guinea fowl, by the time the North American bird arrived in Europe in the 1550s, the name "turkey" was starting to stick. However, the wild undomesticated bird arrived in England from the American colonies in the 1530s and was already becoming a popular main course at Christmas by the 1570s.

So there you have it, from Madagascar to Mexico we get look-alike guinea fowls called turkeys.

LoanWord: A word adopted from a foreign language with little or no modification. Today's loanwords are Arabic and Turkish/Persian in origin. All are very familiar and rather pretty, too. Arabic: Safari, Lemon, Admiral, Alcohol, Algebra, Sofa, Zero, Candy, Caravan, Shawl, Alchemy, Cotton, Zenith, Hazard, Apricot, Giraffe. Turkish/Persian: Sherbet, Talc, Tapestry, Sandal, Scarlet, Bazaar, Carafe, Percale.

Turkish Delight Dribble

She lounged on the sofa, sipping her alcoholic beverage, and nibbled on Turkish Delight. The shawl draped about her shoulders warded off the chill. Some idiot offered her a dish of sherbet. In a scarlet rage, she threw her sandal at the offender.

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Being Thankful

Today I am thankful that we've had some rain. Not much, almost three of inches, but it's been heavenly.

We also had our first serious cold front, dropping into the mid 30s at night, and staying in 40s during the day.

What are you thankful for? Have you participated in NaNo? Are you ready for the holidays? 

Who Really Invented Bar-B-Que and, Why Are Buccaneers involved? A Dribble for AOM and Being Thankful.

This is TWICE my posts have not been published on the date and time that I set them for!

Posting the First Wednesday of every month, the Insecure Writer's Support Group, is the brainchild of Alex Cavanaugh. YOU can sign up HERE to participate.

Every month a question will be posed that may prompt you to share advice, insight, a personal experience or story. Remember, the question is optional. You can write about anything that relates to your writing journey.

Let's give a warm welcome to our co-hosts:  PJ Colando, Kim Lajevardi, Gwen Gardner, Pat Garcia, and Natalie Aguirre!

This month's question is: 99% of my story ideas come from dreams. Where do yours predominantly come from? 

My stories have all come from my imagination. Often it's a single sentence that pops into my head, or it's a character that won't leave me alone that sets me on the path of discovering the rest of the story. My novel A Lizard's Tail, is a prime example. I was working for a friend who had a ceramics shop where she made wholesale souvenir items, like pirate mugs and stuff. In our spare time when we weren't busy pouring slip, glazing, and packing orders, we played with clay. One day I made a lizard. One of the guys who helped with deliveries was a funny young man who's name was Marvin. So that's how my little sculpted lizard got it's name. And he immediately had a story to tell. The sculpture was with me many years and I wrote many, many pages of notes of possible stories. Finally, some 30 years after I had made the sculpture, Marvin P. Tinkleberry, in all his vain glory, came into being. Unfortunately, as is the way of things, the little ceramic lizard lost it's battle with gravity and was broken beyond repair. However, his story now lives in print and I think he would be pleased.

Origins: a recurring post in which I delve into the history of a word or phrase.

Today's words are BUCCANEER and BARBECUE:

It's July, what better month to talk about buccaneers and barbecue? But how could the two possibly be related? Places like Texas, Missouri, Georgia, North Caroline, and Tennessee (to name just a few) all think they not only have the best BBQ, but that they invented it. They are, of course, wrong.

Sit back and enjoy the story.

I bet you think of buccaneers as pirates. It comes from the French word boucanier. Boucaniers were 17th century hunters who lived in Haiti (the western half of the island of Hispaniola) hunting wild boar and cattle. A boucanier made barbacoa which is Spanish for barbecue. The boucanier cooked his meat on a boucan which is French for the Brazilian word buccan. A buccan was a kind of grill on which the indigenous peoples (ie Caribs) roasted human flesh and other meats. 

The island of Hispaniola. Haiti on the left,
Santo Domingo on the right. 

Eventually those French hunters must have gotten tired of barbecuing meat in the heat of the tropics, so they decided to try robbing ships on the high seas instead. Thus, from a buccan, a cannibal's roasting pit, we get barbecue and buccaneer. Now, at your next family BBQ see how many you can gross out with a story about cannibals and their buccans.

LoanWord: A word adopted from a foreign language with little or no modification. Today's loanwords come the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, the Taino. They were not the cannibals. Cannibalism has been attributed to the fierce and war-like Caribs, after which the Caribbean is named. However, there is no evidence that they were cannibles. I pronounce it CARE-ib-bee-an as the people were called CARE-ibs not ca-RIBs. Saying ca-RIB-be-an has never sounded right to me. Other loanwords are from indigenous peoples of North, Central, and South American. From the Taino we get: Canoe, Iguana, Guava, Hurricane, Manatee, Hammock, Maize, Cassava, Cay (pronounced kee), and Savanna. From the Indigenous peoples of North, Central, and South America we get: Moccasin, Chocolate, Caribou, Chipmunk, Hickory, Hominy, Moose, Opossum, Pecan, Persimmon, Racoon, Skunk, Squash, Chili, Tomato, and Jerky.

AOM, America's Only Marsupial

Opossum rummaged around in the canoe looking for something to eat. Iguana watched from high in a tree while eating a guava. Opossum found plenty of food but the tomatoes were too mushy, the jerky too hard, the chili too hot. But then he discovered the chocolate.

***

Being Thankful

Today I'm thankful for a slight backing off of the heat. 11 days of it being 100 degrees or better was a bit much. The highest it got was 106. We've even had a little much needed rain!

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So, where do your story ideas come from? Are you surprised by the origin of any of the loanwords? And how about those Caribs giving us barbeque?

Your Room is a Shambles! IWSG, Origins, LoanWords, Dribble

Posting the First Wednesday of every month, the Insecure Writer's Support Group, is the brainchild of Alex Cavanaugh. YOU can sign up HERE to participate.

Every month a question will be posed that may prompt you to share advice, insight, a personal experience or story. Remember, the question is optional. You can write about anything that relates to your writing journey.

Let's give a warm welcome to our co-hosts:    Diedre Knight, Tonya Drecker, Bish Denham, Olga Godim, and JQ Rose!

Yes! That's my name among the co-hosts. It's been a while.

This month's question is:  Have you ever read a line in novel or a clever plot twist that caused you to have author envy? Oh heck yes. I've read tons of books, not just novels, where I wanted so badly to write like that. Here are a few authors who almost always blow my socks off, who make me sigh: Kahlil Gibran, John Steinbeck, Jack London, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Ursula K. Le Guin, Mary Stewart, Tolkien...the list is long.

Origins: a recurring post in which I delve into the history of a word or phrase.

Today's word is: SHAMBLES

Perhaps your mother, like mine, got frustrated with you and your messy room. Perhaps she told you it was pigsty. Or, like mine, told me it was a shambles and that I'd better clean it up or I'd find everything that was on the floor that didn't belong there, outside on the ground. (That happened twice.) 

Shamble comes to us from the Middle English word shamel or shamil which was a kind of table used to display meat. There are similar words in Old Saxon skamel, (stool) Middle Dutch, schamel, Old High German, scamel, German, schemel, Danish skammel (all meaning a kind of footstool) all of which ultimately were borrowed from the Latin scamillus, which is a low stool or little bench. 

Apparently in the day, a shemel had very distinctive legs and began to be used to describe a person who's legs looked like the meat table; they were bowed or malformed. Because of the deformity the person couldn't move around easily. So, from a shemel, we get the verb, "to shamble," which is one way to walk. Eventually a shamble table came to mean a kind of butcher block, which in turn became another word for a slaughter house. So when my mother called my room a shambles she was really saying, "Your room's a bloody mess!"

LoanWord: A word adopted from a foreign language with little or no modification.

Today's loan words are from the Niger/Congo region which is a goodly portion of West and most of Central Africa. Banjo, Chimpanzee, Goober, Gumbo (which means okra), Impala (a car don't you know?), Marimba, Tilapia, Banana, Bongo, Chigger, Jazz, Jive, Merengue Mumbo Jumbo, Mojo, Okra, Tote, Yam.

And let's not forget Jumbo, which means elephant. Here's a picture of the one and only Jumbo the Elephant (which is redundant because what you're saying is Elephant the Elephant).

His story is rather sad. 

A Dribble for Jumbo

1860-1885

Orphaned in the Sudan, he was sold to an Italian, then bought by a German and moved to the Paris Zoo, then the London Zoo where both tusks were broken. Sold to Barnum and Bailey, he was put on display. He was hit by a train and died.

  

Being Thankful

Today I'm thankful for being able to work on a family project. Many years ago my grandmother (mother's side) wrote and published a cookbook. Me, my sister, and a cousin are going through the process of making all the corrections and edits that never got put into the book. Her book is unique as it tells the story of her life in the Caribbean and  how she ran a guest house, used local foods, and fed fussy American tastebuds. She could feed as many as 60 people a day and she did it all without electricity. She became so "famous" that twice she had articles written about her in the New York Times. Many well known people, like the author John Dos Passos, and Dr. and Mrs. Robert Oppenheimer, stayed at her guest house. This revision is long over-due and so worth it. 

Twice now, as I've been typing it up and making corrections, I have been brought to tears remembering.